Three common dubious ideas about spasm

Paul Ingraham • Mar 8, 2018ARCHIVEDMicroblog posts are archived and rarely updated. In contrast, most long-form articles on PainScience.com are updated regularly over the years.

You see these everywhere:

spasms are a major mechanism of pain, especially in the back and neck

spasm is often “protective” (muscle guarding or splinting)

there is a pain-spasm-pain vicious cycle

These ideas are repeated uncritically ad nauseum by clinicians and amateurs. Among the experts, there’s a long, erratic history of debate over almost zero data, fighting over scraps.

For many years I have declared these ideas to be myths or misleading half truths on PainScience.com. My contrarianism has been novel and interesting, but overconfident: it’s based only on my distrust of vague claims. They smell like myths… but I can’t actually refute them with good evidence. I can only point to warning signs that the claims are probably bogus.

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